vm ECONOMIC CHANGES 125
some previous occupational training. The occupational dis-
tribution of the Jews in the United States was, therefore,
from the outset much healthier than in Eastern Europe.
The great percentage of tailors among the Jewish immi-
grants corresponded to the place which the clothing trades
had assumed in the United States as economic basis for
Jewish immigrants. Before the War, more than half of the
Jewish workmen from Eastern Europe were engaged in
them, having replaced German and Irish labour. The work
could be easily learned, and scores of thousands of Jews,
still unacquainted with the country and its language, found
in the garment trades their first economic foothold. In the
last twenty years the Jews have lost ground in them to the
Polish and Italian immigrants.
The fur trade in America is almost entirely in the hands
of East European Jews. They form also a majority among
the pedlars and street traders. They are prominent in the
real-estate business; whole districts such as Bronx (in
New York City) have been built by them on originally
almost worthless soil. A very considerable proportion of
houses in New York, also in non-Jewish quarters, is owned
by Jews. In the real-estate business, as in the clothing trade,
the East European Jews have outdistanced the German
Jews.
Also among office clerks, and still more in the professions,
the number of East European Jews is growing rapidly.
While towards the end of the nineteenth century the Jews
in these occupations were almost entirely of German origin,
at present the majority consists of sons and grandsons of
East European immigrants. They are specially numerous
among the barristers, doctors, dentists, engineers, chemists,
journalists, and musicians.
The economic crisis of 1929, which in the United States
closed a period of fifty years of almost uninterrupted eco-
nomic expansion and progress, has hit the Jews harder than